The Baigong Pipes
In a remote corner of western China, pipe-like tubes run through the rock of a mountain. Some said they were left by visitors from space.
What was reported
Near the city of Delingha in Qinghai province, on and around Mount Baigong, are rusty-looking tubes and pipe shapes embedded in the rock and scattered near a lake. In the early 2000s, Chinese and Western media reported them as 'alien pipes', possibly 150,000 years old.
The story became popular, and a local monument was put up referring to the extraterrestrial theory.
Explanations offered
Chinese scientists who studied samples found plant material and traces of tree rings in the 'pipes'. They concluded the tubes were fossilised casts of tree roots, formed when minerals filled the spaces left by roots in ancient sand. Similar structures are known elsewhere.
- When
- Reported from the 1990s
- Where
- Mount Baigong, near Delingha, Qinghai, China
- Witnesses
- Visitors, journalists and scientists
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.